


Ruffled Pages

by YukiRiikus_Reading_Room



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Books, Canon Het Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Love, Marriage, Romantic Fluff, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room/pseuds/YukiRiikus_Reading_Room
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron's favorite nights are the ones where Hermione comes to him with tears clinging to her lashes because of a book she just finished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruffled Pages

It always started with the ruffling of pages.

Ron didn't always understand why 'Mione sometimes woke him up in the middle of the night with tears streaming down her face, a book clasped tightly to her chest.  Then again, he supposed he didn't need to know the reason why she needed him to comfort her.

It was enough for him that she needed him at all.

Now, looking up from his desk where he'd been finishing a few pieces of paperwork he'd brought home from the office before bed, he saw her lingering in the doorway with that look on her face.  He didn't need to know the title of the book that fell from her grasp as he swooped her up in his arms.  He didn't need to know what character had caused her tears, which fictional place was in ruin, who had died or lost the love of their life.

He didn't need to know why she felt the pain - he just needed to make it stop.

It was nights like these that showed how well they fit together. Ron knew people didn't think they went well together.  Half of his family, for one, but he knew there were others out there in the wizarding world who felt the same way.  When they'd announced their engagement, something that made the Daily Prophet because of their past exploits saving the Wizarding World, the owls had come flooding in to tell them everything from 'Congratulations' to detailed lists of exactly why it wouldn't work out.  People of them thought she was too good for him, or else that they were just falling together into something comfortable instead of looking for a deeper love connection with anyone else.  Some people thought, no doubt remembering Rita Skeeter's articles from the TriWizard Tournament, that Hermione was using Ron like she'd supposedly used Krum and Harry.

Hermione had taken the whole thing in stride – Ron wasn’t exactly proud of himself, but he’d gone off more than a few times like an exploding kettle over the matter – and started the daily routine of collecting all the owls herself when he wasn’t looking.  He knew she didn’t care what people thought of them, but he did.

He cared what people were saying about his soon to be wife.  He cared that they made her cry every day while she burned the letters when she thought he couldn’t hear.

Hermione sighed into his shoulder as he carried her to their bedroom, her arms looped loosely around his neck.  It was times like this when he loved her the most - when she trusted him enough to let go of the reigns for a few moments and trust that he would take care of her, that he would know exactly what she needed him to do.  He loved every piece of her: the bushy hair, the sharp temper when she thought someone was being particularly stupid, the way she sometimes chewed on the end of her quill when she was constructing her next sentence.  She teased him for it the night that he told her, but he even loved when she bossed him around – he would follow wherever she led him just to listen to the sound of her voice, hoping she might say his name.

They weren’t the perfect couple.  They had their spats about practically everything: her grouchy cat, his annoying owl, her demand for silence when she brought her work home, his wearing socks to bed, her habit of leaving books lying around everywhere, his general distain of putting clothes in the hamper.  Just a few nights ago, Hermione had banished him from their bed and forced him to sleep on the couch after he’d made a wry comment about her new crusade to get better treatment and lodging for owls throughout the Wizarding world.  But they loved each other, and made it work.  They had to work at it every single day, but as Ron deposited Hermione into their bed, he knew it was worth it.

Every piece of pain or frustration was worth it if it meant she would look at him just once more the way she was now.

As he crawled into bed, Ron smoothed a hair down her side loving the way she curled her body into his as he came to rest next to her.  Her fingers twisted in her hair as he kissed away the forgotten remnants of tears dusting her cheeks, smiling into the hollow at the base of her neck as she snuggled into him.  There was nothing sexual about the way she held him, nothing suggestive, but at the end of a long day this is what they both craved and needed most: contact.  There was something so intimate in the way she pressed against him as is she physically needed to occupy the same space his body did, and as their heartbeats synced rhythms and slowed, Ron had to remind himself to breathe as he lazily stroked her back.

Her eyelids fluttered shut as he kissed her forehead, the way she dug her fingernails into the front of his sweater a telltale sign that sleep was rapidly creeping up on her.  Ron didn’t move until she fell completely asleep, leaving her side only long enough to turn off the lights before returning to their bed.

As he felt her soft breath against the side of his face, her hands reaching for him even in sleep, he thanked the faceless writers of her books who created nights like these. 


End file.
